“Naturels to the Founders did not mean simply the word natural..to them the term mean natural born.”
Then one must ask WHY they added ‘born’ to what OBVIOUSLY translates ‘natural’ or, applied to a people, ‘native’. And the only plausible answer is its relation to the English common law term “natural born subject”.
AND the phase translated NB is NOT naturels, but indigenous...
The French word "indigenes" does not appear in that section of the Convention with the French. Only "naturales". So only "naturales" can have been translated as "natural born".
"indigenes" may be translated as "natives" or "indigeonous ones".
Interestingly, I just put the 1797 translation into an on line translator. It was having trouble going from French to English, but when I put in the English sentence
"The natives, or natural-born citizens, are those born in the country, of parents who are citizens"
I got:
"Les indigènes, ou les citoyens naturels, sont ceux nés dans le pays, des parents qui sont des citoyens"
So clearly "natives" was translated as "indigènes" and "natural born citizens" was translated as "citoyens naturels".
That compares very well to the original French that the 1797 translator was working from:
Les naturels, ou indigenes, sont ceux qui sont nés dans le pays de parents citoyens